We are but mere days away from October, and that’s when the video game industry is going to start dropping some big games. Metaphor: ReFantazio, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 are just a few of the big releases coming out next month. Luckily, things are a little less crowded now that Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been pushed to February, but odds are you’re looking forward to at least some things coming out in the next few weeks. This is your last weekend to chip away at the backlog before inevitably adding something new to it. We have a few suggestions for how you can spend your off-time.
2 / 8
Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X and S, PC
Current goal: Make a handsome dwarf
In the interest of keeping you all apprised of the goings on of my best friends and I, one of them took it upon themselves to buy the other two copies of The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria without prompt. Apparently, he saw it for himself and deemed that the others would love it based on the several days of game time that we previously dumped into a similar survival game about dwarves, Deep Rock Galactic. Rather than just return to that game, we are now spinning up new adventures in this one.
For those not in the know, Return to Moria is a first-person survival game set in the popular Tolkien fantasy universe. Set after the events of the books and films, it follows a party of dwarves who set out to reclaim the titular city, which previously fell to the Balrog that you see Gandalf fighting in Fellowship of the Ring. In action, Return to Moria seems like a pretty straightforward survival game in which players mine through the dark tunnels of the abandoned city under the Misty Mountains, harvest resources to craft more advanced tools, and proceed through procedurally generated mines. Having sat in on a party chat when my buds were playing it, it seems like a fun enough time, but I’m going to finally check it out for myself when I find some time this weekend and see if the Lord of the Rings-ness of it all is a compelling enough hook. —Moises Taveras
3 / 8
Play it on: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Current goal: Change the world
Last month, I played about four hours of Metaphor: ReFantazio, the upcoming fantasy RPG from the Persona team. Now, much of what I played is available to the public as a free demo on your favorite online shop (though, you should read up on some of the technical trouble folks are having on PC before you download). This early slice of the game will take you through the fantastical world of the United Kingdom of Euchronia and your progress will carry over to the main game if you decide to jump in on October 11. Metaphor brings in a lot of the time management and social sim elements from Persona, as well as the smooth and stylish turn-based battle system that makes even the most complex fights breezy. While it’s built on the foundations of Persona, Metaphor: ReFantazio feels more grown up than its predecessors because it’s not about high school. The political drama seems pretty compelling in these early hours, and it seems to be planting seeds for a big meta reveal about the divides between fantasy and reality. These four hours had me hooked when I played them, and if you’re even vaguely interested in what Atlus is cooking, you lose nothing by checking out the demo. — Kenneth Shepard
4 / 8
Play it on: Nintendo Switch
Current goal: Make more bed bridges
Sorry for being Mr. Obvious. Look at me, playing the publisher-made game that came out yesterday. What an iconoclast. But it’s Zelda, and you actually get to be Zelda! Imagine the confusion of aunts everywhere, as they exasperatedly say, “But I thought the boy was called Zelda!” and then just shake their heads in disgust.
What can I add at this point that’s insightful or inciteful about such an industry-saturating game? Um, well, I could tell the truth, I suppose, and admit that while I absolutely intend to play Zelda all weekend because I just spent a fortune on the game, the reality is I’m actually just going to play Balatro on my phone while feeling guilty about it. Let’s face it, we all are.—John Walker
5 / 8
Play it on: PC
Current goal: Get more stuff for the garden
I have copies of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and Astro Bot sitting here, just waiting to be played. Black Myth: Wukong, meanwhile, is freshly installed on my PC’s hard drive, still waiting for me to give it the attention it deserves. But this weekend, I fear those three games will get scant little attention from me, as I continue sinking most of my gaming time into the extraordinary UFO 50.
What keeps me coming back to UFO 50 isn’t just the games themselves, though obviously that’s the main thing, the thing without which nothing else would matter. It’s the way that, for each of its 50 games, there are three different goals to strive for. The easiest is usually earning a game’s “garden” item, an object that then goes into a garden where a little mascot character lives, puttering around in their house and yard and interacting with all the different items you’ve earned for them so far. Then comes earning a “gold” cart for the game, which typically happens when you beat it, and then there’s the highest achievement, earning the “cherry” cart, which usually demands you not only beat a game but do so with particular mastery or aplomb. For an arcade-style game, it might mean earning a certain number of points on your way to its conclusion, for instance, while in an adventure game, it may require snagging a particular item en route to victory. With so many games to swap between and so many goals to strive for, I always feel like I’m making progress toward something, even if some challenges still elude me.
In particular, this weekend I hope to make more progress in the dungeon-crawler Valbrace (I’m currently on floor 4), complete some more stages in the innovative sacrificial platformer Mortol, snag the cherry cart for the wonderfully summery arcade shooter Seaside Drive, and maybe complete my second escape from the planet in the resource-harvesting Zelda-like game Pilot Quest. An opening screen in UFO 50 shows the old machine for which these games were ostensibly released, captioned with the text, “PLAY FOREVER.” In the case of UFO 50, I think I just might.—Carolyn Petit
6 / 8
Play it on: Steam, October 10
Current goal: Win without using the aluminum bat
The game that single-handedly kept me and my sister from losing our minds in childhood returns. Backyard Baseball ‘97 is releasing on Steam on October 10, but I’ve got an advanced copy, and boy, oh boy, am I just marinating in nostalgia. Sure, the ceaselessly repeated lines from the cast of kids playing pickup baseball get old real fast, and there are some interesting characterizations that are a clear reminder of how things were in the late ‘90s, but it’s an absolute blast playing BB ‘97 again.
The satisfying smack of the bat when you successfully hit one of the zany special pitches (like an actually wet spitball, a wild zig-zagging hurl, or a slow ball that temporarily freezes into an ice cube over the plate), the chaos that ensues when the fielders smack into each other when trying to make a play, the legend that is Pablo Sanchez—Backyard Baseball is still a total delight. — Alyssa Mercante
7 / 8
Play it on: PC (including Game Pass)
Current goal: Keep political turmoil at bay
I loved the first Frostpunk. It was an approachable city management sim that layered compelling and provocative story beats overtop an otherwise not too difficult-to-decipher resource balancing game. Frostpunk 2 is much more complex, and taking me a lot longer to wrap my head around as a result. It’s a meatier and in some ways much more familiar settlement building experience, but it also has a fascinating and much more nuanced political sim operating in concert with it that adds a whole new set of opportunities and restrictions to navigate. I’m not sure if I’ll ultimately end up liking it as much as the first game, but so far it’s offered plenty for me to chew on and I still love the feeling of cozying up to its apocalyptic machinery amid an endless winter. —Ethan Gach
8 / 8